Securities watchdog finds cracks in Glass Earth’s figures

A Canadian securities commission has made goldminer Glass Earth Gold amend or remove its resource estimates, after finding them noncompliant.

The firm, listed on both the NZX and the Toronto Stock Exchange, has had to alter accompanying past statements that were also considered too bullish.

The British Columbia Securities Commission added the firm on its defaulting issuers list on December 11 because of the problems it found after reviewing the company’s disclosures.

Glass Earth said it had changed or removed all noncompliant disclosures of historical resource estimates, current resource estimates, and measures of gold in exploration targets.

Some previous disclosures had not included requisite cautionary language either.

A recent in-house estimate of 5.6 million tonnes grading 1.25 grams per tonne at its Muir’s Reef prospect near Tauranga had been retracted.

The prospect has a historical estimate of 390,000 ounces of gold at a grade of 1.5 g per tonne and that was only an approximation, with further drill exploration needed. A qualified person had not done enough work to classify that historical estimate as current, so Glass Earth could not treat it as such.

It was based on 45 drill holes made between 1969 and 1995. Because of the poor reliability of the estimate, the resource cannot be divided into inferred or other resource classifications used today.

A 2008 ‘‘global’’ resource estimate of its WKP project near Waihi had also been withdrawn, because it had not complied with the estimation rules.

Its alluvial mining projects near Alexandra combined inferred and indicated gold classifications and had missing back-up information.

That information, and the others that were rescinded, will be rectified by several technical reports the company was developing at its sites to better inform shareholders of the likely resources being investigated at each.

Glass Earth said it hoped to release its technical reports by January 21.

Glass Earth was reviewing its disclosure processes to make sure it would comply with the Canadian exchange’s rules in the future.

The company could not be reached for comment yesterday.